History of Taricaya Research Centre

It is hard to believe that 2004 has come to an end because the year has just flown by. This time last year at Taricaya the canopy walkway was still a distant dream; the mahogany project was generally viewed as a folly, unaccepted by the majority, and the animal release program was still in its infancy. How quickly things have advanced over the last twelve months. We have successfully hatched our first turtle eggs, over 6,000 thousand mahogany saplings germinated, the canopy walkway was successfully opened in February and we have released many animals into our reserve.

As 2004 progressed it was with great pleasure that I watched so many of these projects finally come to fruition. It was the hard work of volunteers and staff alike over the previous years, and of course this year, that made these successes possible and it is hard to know where to begin so I will try and summarise the best I can.

One of my personal favourites is the animal release program. I often find it very distressing when we receive some of the animals as they are so badly mistreated and in such poor health but seeing them recover with a better diet and health care is so very rewarding. Before this year we had successfully released a wide variety of animals including monkeys, anteaters, parrots, peccaries and many more but in 2004 we dedicated more time and money to the project and excitingly received our first cats. Imba, a beautiful margay, was released near one of our mammal colpas earlier in the year and is happily roaming our reserve and Preciosa, the jaguar, is still with us as we teach her to hunt and watch as her health improves. She was very badly mistreated and her now shiny pelt is a sure sign that her recovery is nearly complete and next year we must search for a suitable area in which to release her.

In 2004 we also received two species of peccary (wild pigs), coatis (S. American raccoons), four species of monkey, three species of macaw, several types of parrot, paca (a large rodent), tapitis (wild rabbits), tayra (large member of the weasel family) and a Brazilian Tapir. Unfortunately not all the animals survive as was the case with Rosa , the tapir, and the baby tayra. Sometimes when they reach us they are beyond help but the successful releases always make the project and the effort worthwhile.

In previous reports I have spent a long time explaining the ongoing progress of the mahogany project so I shall not repeat more of the same but simply report that next year we shall start to transplant the saplings and we will enter the third and final phase of the project monitoring which conditions best favour the newly planted trees and continuing to measure survival rates of the plants.

The turtle project (see October's report) was another personal favourite of mine as it was one of the first projects we designed at Taricaya. Next year we will have the full support of the government organisation, Inrena , and hope to improve the project further still. We will build a new artificial beach and will involve more of the locals in the collection of the eggs thus reducing the problem of poaching and illegal extraction.

It seems that I am always commenting on the progress of our official reserve and looking back over the last 18 months it has really been a battle to get the government to process the application. The tedious and often excessive paperwork often drove me to distraction but I am pleased to report that we are now in the final stage of our application and when I present the technical report that the government has requested we should finally be awarded the 480 hectares of the Reserva Ecologica Taricaya . The reserve is a culmination of the work of every volunteer we have received at Taricaya because the data collected from the observation walks, platforms, canoe observations and canopy walkway has made the reserve possible. This year we built a new platform at New Farm and of course the canopy platform, 50m above the ground.

Apart from the larger projects 2004 has seen the development and remodelling of the medicinal plant garden, the successful completion of the dam ready for 2005, the construction of a large pool for the caiman project, new cages for the animal release program, the purchase of two new canoes for the centre and various projects at New Farm including crop and livestock management; nurseries for bamboo, palms and ironwood and the successful cultivation of crops thought to be unsuited to the area and climate.

All that remains is for me to wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year and thank all the volunteers and staff alike for the hard work that made 2004 so successful. To those of you who are future volunteers let's make 2005 even better still!!!

On November 1st 2003, Taricaya Research Centre celebrated its second anniversary and during those first two years we are proud of the advances volunteers like yourselves have enabled us to accomplish. When people talk about the concept of 'conservation' they are often talking about several different areas that all fall under the general umbrella provided by the term. Here at the Taricaya Research Centre we have tried to involve ourselves in as many forms of conservation as possible but of course it was, and indeed remains, necessary to have a common goal to unite our projects. Thus the goal of this general outline is to explain why we are doing what we are doing and to maybe elucidate, what may not be obvious, connections between our varied projects; past, present and future.

Our most immediate aim in the Peruvian Amazon was to provide enough data of scientific interest to present to the government in an application for a reserve to be declared in the region in which we are located. New laws published by the Peruvian government in February 2001 allow for private parties to apply for reserves in areas not already protected providing there is enough evidence of scientific value to merit protecting the area. The Taricaya Research Centre is located in an area of rainforest that was under serious threat of destruction and by gathering as much data as possible we hoped to create a reserve to unite with the one that currently exists to the north-east of our location. The first task was to create a trail system for our observation tasks. Hours of hard work now enable us to boast a fully-mapped trail network of over 55km which is marked for purposes of study. Thanks to the countless hours of wildlife observation in the form of walks on these trails, platform observations and the use of blinds we are officially to be given our reserve over the next couple of months. "La Reserva Ecologica Taricaya" is a culmination of the work of our volunteers and their commitment over the last two years. We have successfully provided enough data to satisfy the government that not only does the area merit protection but that our work over the last two years has already provided a positive impact on the ecosystem. This improvement has taken the form of a huge increase in wildlife sightings in the area. This increase reflects a re-discovered confidence by the fauna that the presence of humans in the area does not correlate with an increased risk of them being hunted. We have been successful thus far in protecting the area but that is just half the work.

Whilst staff and volunteers alike are very aware that the fauna is returning to the Taricaya area we have to justify to the Peruvian government, in the form of an annual report, that our work in the new reserve is having a positive impact on the ecosystem. This means that our data collection needs to be continued but to an even higher level so that we can process the information in a way that meets this new goal. To this end we are now investigating such models as relative abundance indices, area diversity, forest-type distributions and much more. This information, by providing annual comparisons, should reflect the advances made within the new reserve and satisfy the government that we are improving the area. You as new volunteers will be responsible for this new data collection and this project will be a constant one during your visit with us.

Last year we developed yet another fauna monitoring technique by using canoes to paddle through the swamps during the wet season. This novel technique enabled us to increase our data collection as we had access to many new areas where we could identify many species such as herons and kingfishers that we not seen from the trails.

The observation walks may well appear to be the toughest assignment at Taricaya because often hours are spent hiking with little to show for the time spent. However, the more time you spend out walking the trails the better at wildlife spotting you will become. The animals and birds are out there and over the last two years we have had some truly amazing sightings. It would be impossible to list them all but perhaps some of the best have been: giant anteaters, giant otters, black jaguar, female puma with her cub, red howler monkeys, razor-billed curassow, green anaconda, white-lipped peccaries and much more. We have currently recorded over 300 species of bird and over 35 species of mammal but there is plenty more out there to find. Therefore I urge all of you to persevere with the observation hikes because you will only get better and better at spotting and identifying the wildlife you come across.

Taricaya Research Centre has been involved in many projects during its first two years and the majority are still functioning now. These diverse projects involved various forms of "conservation" and its array of definitions. The motives behind the designation of a reserve are fairly straightforward but what of our other work. One of our biggest successes has been the release of wildlife back into the area. For example there are numerous species in the Peruvian Amazon that are under threat of extinction or have actually been regionally hunted to extinction. The area in which the Taricaya Research Centre is situated has seen many such local extinctions such as the black spider monkey (Kateles paniscus) and the white-fronted capuchin monkey (Cebus albifrons). Two of the most seriously threatened species still in the area are the freshwater side-necked turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) and the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger).

With these facts in mind we tried to apply for status as an official animal rescue centre. Such a centre would receive unwanted pets and confiscated animals to be nurtured back to health with the ultimate aim of releasing them into a safe environment in the from of our newly-created reserve. The paperwork and politics of a complicated Peruvian legal system have put plans of an official centre on hold but we do have an unofficial agreement with the local authorities to allow us to proceed in this same line of work and already we have many animals located at Taricaya and successful releases have been achieved also. Over recent months we have been re-modelling the animal rehabilitation cages and our system is much more efficient than before. Successes up to date have included four different species of monkey, pygmy (or silky) anteaters, sloths, parrokeets, macaws, parrots, peccaries, armadillos and our latest resident at the Taricaya Research Centre a very rare baby Brazilian tapir.

The turtles mentioned above are under serious threat from poachers that hunt both the eggs and the grown adults for food and to sell. In a joint effort with Fondepes and ProNaturaleza we have built an artificial beach at the research centre and whilst early project plans were unsuccessful we have since built good relations with our immediate neighbours who have agreed to help us in the coming year in the collection of the turtle nests. So 2004 could be our inaugural year for the turtle release program at the Taricaya Research Centre!!

The protection of the black caiman, also mentioned earlier, motivated us to build an enclosure with man-made pools at the Taricaya Research Centre. The black caiman has been hunted to the point of extinction by poachers over the last thirty or forty years for their skins. They are now rated in category one of CITES list (Convention of International Trade in Endagered Species). This coupled with their naturally slow reproductive rate and low survival percentages motivated this project. In the wild only about 5% of young caiman reach 18 months of age and so by collecting young black caiman we can rear them to this age when they appear big enough to fend for themselves and then start to re-introduce them back into our rivers, lakes and swamps. The project has been moderately successful until now but the new enclosure promises a much higher success rate.

Reforestation is one of the more common concepts of 'conservation'. Trees fall over on a regular basis in the rainforest due to a combination of climatic conditions, poor soil and the effects of parasitic plants. We have used these fallen trees to provide wood for various projects at the centre because when buying building materials in Puerto Maldonado you can guarantee if the wood has come from a designated logging area or from illegal extraction. However, for every fallen trunk used we have planted saplings thus enhancing the forest's healing process. We have used many plants such as castaña, ishpingo, copuasu, cedar, mahogany and many more. Reforestation has also been employed along our trails. The growth rate of these plants in the actual forest has proven to be fairly slow and so we have developed some new ideas on growth of trees of economic importance which will be covered in the section on new and ongoing projects.

Other projects have been implemented over the last two years with the aim of providing the locals with a good alternative food source that does not depend on the hunting of native fauna. Here we have concentrated on two reproduction programs (the giant snail & "bocachica" fish) and a pilot farm.

The giant snail is a handsomely-sized mollusc that is very high in protein and our aim was to discover the most successful methods for breeding them in captivity with the goal of teaching the locals how to maintain the same programs and thus supplement their meat requirements with the snails. This ready supply of protein would hopefully reduce the necessity to hunt as frequently. Thus in January 2002 artificial pools were dug using locally discovered clay deposits to waterproof them. Results were mediocre in that whilst the snails did reproduce the time and work invested did not justify the returns in the form of meat. It appeared that predation had a big role to play in the absence of fully grown adults and a lack of food in the development of young snails. Thus in June of the same year we transferred the remaining adults to concrete pools protected by netting and the results were much more exciting as two new generations of snail appeared very quickly. The pools were just allowed to fill with natural rainwater and soon the stagnant pools resembled more their natural environment. These encouraging results led to a new plan for 2003 whereby we released five thousand baby snails into our seasonal swamps and thus the project was united with the fish breeding project outlined below.

The concept with the fish breeding was almost identical. When one travels by river in the Tambopata-Madre de Dios region it is impossible not to notice the hoards of nets strewn across the rivers. The rivers are seriously over-fished and this seriously effects the very complex food chains that exist. Therefore we hoped to utilise the seasonal pools that form on our land during the wet season to implement a breeding program to start to replenish the river systems and again to provide good alternatives to the hunting of local wildlife. Thus, along with the snails, we released three thousand young "bocachica" fish into our biggest seasonal swamp in January 2003. The "bocachica" is a quick-growing fish tolerant to low levels of oxygen so ideally suited for our needs. The project appeared doomed at an early stage as within two weeks of releasing the fish The Madre de Dios province of Peru suffered its worst flooding since 1962. This meant that not just our swamps but the whole reserve area was underwater. We were convinced that the fish had been swept away when the water levels finally dropped. We were very pleasantly surprised when we harvested the fish in July/August of this year, when the swamps naturally dried up, that there were still many fish left in the swamp. We actually discovered many different species not normally associated with swamps that were trapped by the receding water levels. This meant increased competition for food and oxygen for our remaining "bocachica" but nevertheless we had a good harvest and the dried fish are still being used to feed the animals on the pilot farm (see next section). The projections are good then for 2004 as we are convinced that releasing the fish in the swamps will provide a much cheaper food income for local farmers with minimal effort on their behalf. Harvesting is a simple process as the fish become concentrated into a smaller area as the swamps dry up.

The pilot farm project was officially opened in November 2002 and was designed to achieve many goals. We brought guinea pigs and goats from Cusco with the idea of again providing alternative food sources for the local communities. The goats have started to breed successfully and are producing milk for both drinking and for making cheese. As of yet the breeding population is not high enough to start eating their meat but we are confident that next year goat will be on the menu for many of the locals participating in the project! The program is a simple one whereby farmers are given a fixed number of breeding animals (e.g. five). Once the farmer has ten animals he returns five and keeps the rest to breed and increase his population. The five returned animals are then given to a new farmer and so on. The same principle was to be employed with the guinea pig (or "cuy") but the race we brought from Cusco had been genetically manipulated by selective breeding to produce higher quantities of meat and this appears to have diminished their natural resistance to climatic changes and the majority perished during the first six months. We have also brought from Lima hens bred for their egg-laying capacity. The results have been great as many of our neighbours now produce their own eggs as do we at the Taricaya Research Centre.

The pilot farm has also been our base for several projects related to crops and plants of economic importance. We are experimenting with crops currently imported from neighbouring countries such as Brazil and Colombia. These include tobacco, coffee and cocoa. If we can successfully produce such crops in well managed parcels of land then their increased value will attract local farmers and reduce the large scale farming of rice and corn which is responsible for huge areas being cleared every year. We have also experimented cultivating crops out of season when their market prices are higher and again we have had small successes which need to be built on in the future.

The pilot farm project is also a base for other projects we have initiated over the last two years. One such project is the palmiche project. Palmiche palms are a natural resource of the rainforest used in roof building. Current extraction usually occurs from protected areas causing severe damage to local populations. Therefore we have extracted samples from both plants and seeds and re-planted them to monitor their success in varying climatic and topographic conditions. If we can successfully grow palmiche palms in farm-like situations then impact on the environment within reserved areas will be greatly reduced (in fact there are no longer any palmiche palms left outside protected areas) and once again an alternative source of income will become available to local people. The germination rate of palmiche palms has been slow but we are starting to see results after almost a year with seeds planted in plastic bags and 2004 will see big advances in the project.

In conclusion the Taricaya Research Centre has developed very quickly over its first two years and we are very keen to maintain this momentum and continue the excellent work. The centre itself has been modified during this time to increase comfort levels for you the volunteers and provide a better working environment. We hope to provide you with numerous opportunities to help us do our part for 'conservation'. These projects are well established and will be continued during your stay with us, others (see later) have just begun and new ones will appear whilst you are with us. Any personal interests or ideas are always welcome and can be accommodated with no problem. Above all I am certain that the more you put in the more you will learn and appreciate about our work in one of earth's last paradises so get stuck in, do your part and above all enjoy yourselves.

Projects Information | History | Safety | Flora & Fauna